Carrie L. Krucinski

One
of the most important jobs for a poet is to tell the truth as she sees it and
have that truth transcend in such a way that the readers recognize this truth in
either their life, or the lives of those around them. Sarah Freligh has
skillfully accomplished this difficult feat in her new book of poems, Sad Math. Her poems resonate with those who came of age
in the late 1960’s, as well as those who have come of age since, those who’ve
struggled with what it means to be independent of the previous generation’s
moral code and live life on their own terms. In short, we learn about
ourselves.Freligh writes about
experiences many women are told to forget and not speak of again. It is her
honesty that draws the reader in and makes her not want to look away, no matter
the subject.

Sad Math, is a portal
through which the reader goes back in time and lives the life of a young woman
in the mid-twentieth century. The young woman Freligh writes of comes to terms
with her mother’s illness and death, the strangeness of sex-ed, an unplanned
pregnancy and adoption, and eventually middle age. As a young woman in the
1960’s she begins to understand what society expects of her, and she questions
the roll women are expected to play next to their male counterparts. Freligh is
at her best when going into those dark moments we all refuse to discuss in
certain company, if at all. One of the best examples of this is from the poem,
“Donut Delite.” The last stanza speaks of the confusion of adolescence and what
is sometimes required of women from their male bosses.The speaker recalls how her boss said goodbye
to her on her last day of work:

On my last day the boss pressed

a wad of bills into my hand and kissed me

goodbye. When he slipped

his tongue into my mouth,

I could feel the old dog

of his heart rear up and tug

at its leash. His breath tasted

like ashes. He was my father’s friend.

I was sixteen and didn’t understand

Yet how life can kill you a little

at a time. Still I kissed him back.

Even
the reader who has never experienced this type of situation personally, can
understand why the speaker kissed the man back. He was a friend of her
father’s; that’s probably why she had the job in the first place. It would have
been rude not to return the kiss. Freligh frankly tells what happened, but it
is that frankness that allows the emotion to take center stage. When discussing
the effects of giving a child up for adoption, Freligh uses facts to build
tension and allows the reader to interpret what he has read. She does not fall
back on sentimentality, which would be easy to do. Perhaps it is Freligh’s
background as a reporter which allows her speak of the most delicate matters and
vulnerable moments without becoming too precious.She shows the readers what they need to see,
but she never tells them how to feel. In one of her most powerful poems, “The
Birth Mother on the Day After,” she speaks of the day she went home from the
hospital, a mother without a child. The first four lines of the poem draw the
reader in and dare them to look away:

My stitches pinched. The pad

bunched between my legs,

leaked blood all over

my underpants.

Later
on in the poem the speaker tells her mother’s point of view:

she thought it best

if we put this mess

behind us. I said

OK…

Freligh
draws the reader back to, not just the mess of an unplanned pregnancy, but also
the literal mess of childbirth. She once again reports what has happened; she
does not tell the reader how to feel.

Each
of the three sections of Sad Math builds
to a crescendo of acceptance where Freligh is able to speak of past lovers,
middle age, and the dead without bitterness. This is not to say that she
brushes off the adoption of her daughter, in fact, she speaks of this child quite
a bit. As a matter of fact, Freligh doesn’t shy away from her feelings when
thinking back on the child she let go.

As
a way to speak of quiet tragedy that no one else may see, Freligh uses sonnets.
It seems that free verse would be easier when it comes to discussing the
darkest corners of one’s life; however, the poems in Sad Math that are particularly strong and gripping are that way because
Freligh has decided to convey these overwhelming emotions in just fourteen
lines. Many of the most emotional poems are set into formal structure.

Another
device Freligh uses to cut away unnecessary vocabulary and focus on theme and subject
is using the title as plot. By doing this, she is able to write poems, which show
a woman remembering a lost child or the death of her mother, but Freligh
doesn’t need to worry about context within the poem because she’s given her
reader all they need to know in the title. She can quickly get to the marrow of
her work and connect with her subject and her reader.

The
best example of both these devices is in the poem, “The Birth Mother at Work in
J.C. Penney’s Portrait Studio.” Notice that the context the reader needs is in
the title. We know who the poem is about, and where the action of the poem
takes place. The poems that precede this also give some foreshadowing about
where this poem will be going emotionally.Readers should understand by this point that it is difficult to take
portraits after giving a child up for adoption. In the last stanza of this sonnet, the speaker
says:

…Through camera’s lens,

I see what might have been: all grabby

hands and sticky lips. Eternity.

Sad Math
helps readers see that form and emotion are not mutually exclusive. It is
rare for a poem to put a reader into an emotional frame of mind just by the
title. Freligh is masterful at
sustaining the emotional pull in her poems throughout the entire book. Many times
poets concentrate on the first poem of a book and seem to give little thought
to the last. Fortunately, that is not the case with Sad Math.The last poem,
“Wondrous,” finds the speaker driving while listening to the radio. The topic
at hand is the birthday of E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web. The speaker is taken back to her mother reading
the book to her and her sister.

…though this is the fifth time Charlotte

has died my mother is crying again and we’re
laughing

at her because we know nothing of loss and
its sad math,

how every subtraction is exponential…

Here
Freligh looks back on her life before the loss of her daughter and her mother,
the loss innocence and youth, and readers are reminded of all they have read and
how it seemed as though they were reading about themselves.The last line of, “Wondrous,” has the speaker’s
mother telling her children a decade after her death, “I’m OK.” Freligh’s word choices are direct, not flowery, which
makes this collection honest and heart wrenching.The only thing the speaker, and the reader,
needs to hear is that everyone/everything will be OK. That Freligh ends her
book with such a clear, simple statement speaks volumes of the artistry that is
exhibited throughout this book

Sad Math is not a book only
for women, or mothers, or the middle aged—no, it is a book for those who care
about the human condition and what people can learn from one another. Readers
mourn with Freligh while she writes about her losses, but they also learn from
her fighting spirit, which can be funny, boisterous, and reflective all at the
same time. Sarah Freligh is one of the best poets practicing the craft today,
and to read her is to make contact with the divine.